Probably true.  In Arkansas, one can often spot the old house sites by the
large shade trees remaining 50 to 80 years after the house is gone.
Logging Companies here always left those and are considered
"unmerchantable" since they often have large or small bits of metal in them
and the potential damage to the saws (including the felling and limbing
saws as well as the mill saws) was not worth the board feet in the tree.  I
remember one of the foremen at the Potlatch mill in Lewiston, Idaho, had a
collection of junk (including lots of bullets) that came out of logs during
the milling process.

As an aside concerning saw damage, a logging site type in many areas of the
west are "springboard stumps".  Many of the large trees had flairs toward
the bottom of the trunk and notches would be put into the tree so that men
could stand on springboards and cut the tree truck above the flair.  This
was paerticularly important in the days of the river drives where the
flairs would cated on rock and gravel at the edge of the rivers and also
made forming the logs into rafts much more difficult.  The rock and gravel
embedded in the flaired end would do major damage to the expensive saw
blades.  The practice continued into the days of railroad and truck hauling
of logs since the flair made it difficult to secure them onto the railroad
car or truck beds.  Most species of trees never get that big anymore.

Smoke.


Smoke (Michael A.) Pfeiffer, RPA
Ozark-St. Francis National Forests
605 West Main Street
Russellville, Arkansas 72801
(479) 968-2354  Ext. 233
e-mail:  [log in to unmask]

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.




                      Kris Oswald
                      <KOswald@WILLIAM         To:      [log in to unmask]
                      S-INT.COM>               cc:
                      Sent by:                 Subject: Re: Back to the topic of archaeology (soon)
                      HISTORICAL
                      ARCHAEOLOGY
                      <[log in to unmask]
                      u>


                      09/15/2003 08:48
                      AM
                      Please respond
                      to HISTORICAL
                      ARCHAEOLOGY






One question to the list...back in high school my woodshop teacher told
me a story of a lumber mill stopping production one day due to the saw
binding on something embedded in the tree...the story as it was told
that the object turned out to be lithic arrowhead...has anybody ever
heard of this happening?..or did I get sucked up into a big yarn?

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Pfeiffer [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 9:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Back to the topic of archaeology (soon)


Daniel H. Weiskotten said:
"OK, it seems we have strayed out of the realm of soil in this lumber
thread, although it has been very interesting and does have considerable
interest to those of us that do historic building surveys, but it has
been a long time since I actually excavated a 2x4."

For those of us who work "in the woods", lumber and logging technology,
and everything asociated with getting the trees from the forest to the
lumber yards, IS as much archaeology as all the artifacts in a domestic
or any other site type.

:-)

Smoke.


Smoke (Michael A.) Pfeiffer, RPA
Ozark-St. Francis National Forests
605 West Main Street
Russellville, Arkansas 72801
(479) 968-2354  Ext. 233
e-mail:  [log in to unmask]

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
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